Welcome to Ben's Blog. It's the story of a
season as Warwick bid to emulate their heroes of 2007, who won the
Daily Mail U18 Cup for the first time.

Many of the team, as U14s, were at Twickenham to see Warwick
beat Barnard Castle 24-23 in one of the greatest finals and are hungry
to experience the thrill of playing - and winning - at Twickenham.

Ben Howard, is full back and vice-captain, a
pupil at Warwick since he was five. Like several of his team-mates,
this is his 10th and final season playing rugby for the school. Will it
climax in an unforgettable experience on the greatest stage of all?

After a 10-day break, the boys were eager to return to the field for
our fifth round Daily Mail RBS Cup match against St George’s Harpenden.
Following the U15s victory the day before at Stowe in their 5th round
tie, we were keen to come away with a result against relatively unknown
opposition.

Obviously inspired by their team talk and pre-match preparation, St
George’s came out ready to provide a tough challenge, and we made very
hard work of it.

A final score of 33-25 gave credit to the never-say-die attitude of
St George’s, yet after being 33-8 up, had a few different choices been
made, we know we could have celebrated a much larger victory, as
opposed to the slightly anti-climactic nature of the win.

A big problem seemed to be a desire to play expansive rugby too
early, before sucking in the necessary defenders, resulting in forced
passes and silly mistakes which gifted possession away.

Defensively, the boys know that the mistakes, when made, were basic
and uncharacteristic of us. The narrow, 'one out' rugby played by St
George’s should have been easy to defend, but poor organisation around
the ruck sometimes left us exposed, notably resulting in a well-taken
try by their scrum half.

We should have made more of our forward dominance in scrum and line-outs, instead, running from deep, we found ourselves camped in our own half for much of the second period with a questionable reluctance to kick.

Two yellow cards, for captain Teddy Russ and scrum half Rory Jackson - to match the colour of his boots - left us playing 20 minutes of the second half with 14 men, something which we know will be punished more severely by stronger opposition.

Although never fearing defeat, we seemed to go through the motions for much of the match, spurred only by a few cheap shots and the rare chance to attack for a prolonged period of time.

This was something which we did very well, with the majority of our ventures into their half resulting in points, either from the boot of Tommy Williams, who kicked meticulously, or from the well-worked tries scored by the guys.

However, this match was undoubtedly an eye opener into the tough nature of cup rugby and the necessity to put away matches when we have the chance. We were able to get away with it this time, but we know that from now on, we will need to be more clinical and smart as we meet tougher opponents.

Bedford, on Saturday, will be all of that.

Warwick produced an outstanding effort to beat a strong Stowe side in the fifth round of the Daily Mail RBS U15 Cup.

Stowe started the better of the two sides but some last-ditch defence allowed Warwick to take control of the first half and tries from Joe Blake and Max Ley put Warwick up 12-5 at the break.

The second half saw Warwick score a further two tries from the magnificent Blake and fly half Henry Stride. Warwick demonstrated greater determination and power from the forwards and overall the difference between the two sides was the greater will to win the collisions.

The side now must tweak and improve key areas of their game as they progess to the last 32 where they will meet Bishop’s Hereford at home on December 7, snow permitting.